drunk as David's sow en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Etymology
Francis Grose, in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), claims derivation from an instance in which a man named David Lloyd, who was accustomed to showing his six-legged sow as a curiosity, found his intoxicated wife where he expected the sow to be. Grose's dictionary was meant as a work of humour, and this story is almost certainly fanciful. Variants of the phrase predate it by over a century (see e.g. R. Monsey's Scarronides (1665) "As drunk as any Davids Sows" (p. 20)).
Meanings
- (not-comparable, qualifier:simile) Thoroughly drunk.
Synonyms
drunk as a fiddler · tight as a tick · drunk as a cunt · drunk as a piper · pissed as a fart · drunk as Chloe · drunk as a lord · drunk as an owl · pissed as a newt · drunk as a skunk · drunk as a wheelbarrow · full as a goog · drunk as a sow · drunk as a fiddler's bitch